About Me

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Update on NYTimes paywall

I posted before on miserly strategies to avoid buying a NYTimes subscription. It now appears to me their paywall is even wimpier than I had originally suspected. When I wrote the earlier post I hadn't yet experienced the paywall (either it wasn't on or I hadn't reached my limit of free articles for the month; I suspect the former). Having played around with it a bit, I've found the following.

If I try to read, for example, the Sidney Lumet obituary (btw, I highly recommend Dog Day Afternoon :-), the browser url bar shows the following when the subscription page has finally loaded:

The Financial Times went the other way -- this trick doesn't work, and outside links still hit the paywall. I think the FT has the best coverage of finance and economics of any daily, including the WSJ.

IMHO, the FT covers more than the WSJ, but the FT is less accurate than the WSJ. I think both publications are trying hard to be top-notch, but operating at different points on the "are we sure enough of this article to public it?" curve. The NYT, again IMHO, is really struggling, and the editorial page is leaking into the news ... Sidenote on FT - they have a deal with Bloomberg where Bloomberg links paywalled FT articles for a kickback. This model is working well for both.

If you're interested in the business of writing news and some of the recent struggles the New York Times has gone through, I highly recommend you see Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times. If you're less interested in the business part, David Carr drives the film He is a fascinating character, equal parts engaging and acerbic.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787777/

I don't know if it's been picked up for distribution yet, but those of you in the San Francisco area can see it at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 29 or May 1.

Many sexual compulsives with ADD have had experiences like Brian's. They struggled in school because they got bored or had a hard time paying attention. Once bored, they would stare out the window, often caught up by sexual fantasies. As adults, relationships are difficult for them. Impulses carry them from project to project, relationship to relationship, job to job. Their minds come screeching to a halt as they try to remember a friend's name or the location of the escort they visited last night. Most feel the self-loathing of people who are working under capacity, and experience the pain and grief of living a life of lost opportunities and diminished personal potential.